Longitudinal magnetic recording in its conventional form has been projected to suffer from superparamagnetic instabilities at high bit densities. As the grain size of the magnetic recording medium is decreased in order to increase the areal density, a threshold known as the superparamagnetic limit at which stable data storage is no longer feasible is reached for a given material and temperature.
An alternative to longitudinal recording is perpendicular magnetic recording. Perpendicular magnetic recording is believed to have the capability of extending recording densities well beyond the limits of longitudinal magnetic recording. Perpendicular magnetic recording heads for use with a perpendicular magnetic storage medium may include a pair of magnetically coupled poles, including a main write pole having a relatively small bottom surface area and a flux return pole having a larger bottom surface area. A coil having a plurality of turns is located around the main write pole or yoke for inducing a magnetic field from the write pole, through a hard magnetic recording layer of the storage medium, into a soft magnetic underlayer and back to the return pole.
Thermal stability of magnetic recording systems can be improved by employing a recording medium formed of a material with a very high magnetic anisotropy Ku). The energy barrier for a uniaxial magnetic grain to switch between two stabilized states is proportional to the product of the magnetic anisotropy Ku) of the magnetic material and the volume (V) of the magnetic grains. In order to provide adequate data storage, the product KuV should be as large as 60 kT, where k is the Boltzman constant and T is the absolute temperature, in order to provide 10 years of thermally stable data storage. Although it is desirable to use magnetic materials with high Ku, very few of such hard magnetic materials exist. Furthermore, with currently available magnetic materials, recording heads are not able to provide a sufficient magnetic writing field to write on such materials.
Heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) refers to the concept of locally heating a magnetic recording medium to reduce the coercivity of the recording medium so that the applied magnetic writing field can more easily direct the magnetization of the recording medium during the temporary magnetic softening of the recording medium caused by the heat source. HAMR allows for the use of small grain media, which is desirable for recording at increased areal densities, with a larger magnetic anisotropy at room temperature assuring a sufficient thermal stability.
However, several major problems are associated with HAMR designs. There are limited types of hard magnetic materials having sufficiently high magnetic anisotropies, e.g., Ku>107erg/cm3. The candidates are L10-phased materials such as FePt, CoPt, FePd and CoPd, NdFeB, and SmCo. All of these materials have chemically ordered structures, which are difficult to obtain while optimizing the desired microstructure. For example, annealing a FePt thin film at high temperature helps obtain the ordered L10 phase, but promotes grain growth significantly. Another problem is that the Curie temperatures of such hard magnetic materials are generally very high, e.g., greater than 400° C. for FePt. Since magnetic recording discs rotate at very high speeds, it is difficult to raise the temperature of a surface spot of the media above its Curie temperature within such a short duration. Moreover, organic lubricant materials evaporate under such high temperature.
A need therefore exists for recording films that can effectively be used for heat-assisted magnetic recording.